@BESW @SevenSidedDie @NautArch I do think it's largely a messaging problem. I think "we're instituting a $3 cover" with a footnote in small print saying "this can also be satisfied by making $5 in-store purchases" was pretty tone-deaf. I wish they'd considered, instead: "hey, gamers: we love having you here *and* we love paying our rent on time. We've noticed that most of you spend a couple of bucks each time you're here, but that's not income we can count on. We're going to ask for $3 a head *or* $5 in purchases. This means 80% of you will be unaffected, since you already pick up snacks he…

If you keep it focused on your Pastorcs, then I think that would be narrow enough, sure.

And be prepared for questions about your friend's experience. For example, many more people have watched Lord of the Rings than have played D&D [citation needed], so that might be a good baseline to compare to.

@Asteria not a whole heck of a lot. mulling over how much to stick to the stereotypes when introducing folks to RP (I'm using D&D 5e since that's what I'm comfortable running, but I suspect this is a problem that's not at all unique to D&D)

@Shalvenay well it would depend on the people playing, of course, but when I introduced new players I found that sticking to "stereotypes" allowed them to get a better grasp on what was happening, and what they should / could be doing.

@Shalvenay I very, very much enjoy high fantasy, with modern fantasy also being a favorite. (99% of all books and manga I read is fantasy :P) I like sci-fi as well, but not nearly as much. If it involves guns though, I'm less interested. Can't stand them. 100% out as soon as someone mentions "mechs"

@Asteria ah, so sword and sorcery all the way, basically. I split between medium-to-high-fantasy and some SF stuff, can do modern-fantasy to some extent but can't stand supers, space-opera-fantasy (think SW), or postapoc

@Nyoze alright, quiet. take it it's not a good time for our session though?

@Asteria oh, I have some quite fond memories of those days. ran with a pretty fantastic bunch of folks on the whole. even got to make a couple of cameo appearances in blogposts, and "I was there" at footnotes in ingame history

@Asteria I don't really do mechs either, but that's because tracks tend to work better. modern-fantasy is interesting to me as sort of a "worlds collide" sort of thing, tho, btw -- I tend to be attracted to that theme in general

@Shalvenay worlds colliding is a pretty interesting idea...unfortunately I don't have a lot of experience in similar areas. And I don't dislike mechs for any noble reason. Heck, they could be the most effective to battle / transport ect and I would still hate them.

@Shalvenay You can still expose yourself to the existing literature/media without falling into tropes. If anything, it can educate you on how to avoid tropes, and can make you more aware of unintentional cliches.

@MikeQ no, that's not the reason I don't have much media exposure -- I have trouble setting aside reality-rules for story-genre-rules, and that makes me have trouble understanding how fictional characters behave

I was reading this post:
What information does a pilot have about aircraft operating on an intersecting runway?
and noticed this on the map:
(airnav.com)
Why is a "penalty box" marked on the map? What is it? What is it used for?

Dynamic and interesting is great and fantastic, but when you're a PC roaming through a world of supernatural beings who we've been trained to believe just want to kill us... Providing children of creatures you would assume you would want to kill could be... Weird.

I don't know... I get that Werewolves have to come from somewhere, but my understanding of werewolves is as bloodthirsty killers when shifted. Running into a werewolf child in a game would not be comfortable for me.

Werewolves have always been a sore spot with me though... I understand that while human, they have no idea/no control over their wolf form, but... Something has to be done to protect people. If we've got wolves running around murdering who they see fit, what's to stop everyone else?

Alternatively @Nyoze, introducing were-kids could be a neat way to humanize some of the "monsters", and normalize them as regular ol creatures -- it makes the PCs hesitate before defaulting to murderhobo mode

It would be a unique diplomacy/intimidate opportunity. "Look, if you try to eat me and my friends, your kids will probably get hurt in the process, and we don't want that. How about we instead team up and hunt some wild boars?"

Actually, instituting any sort of survival instinct in hostile NPCs can result in atypical encounters. Instead of mindlessly fighting to the death, they may try to flee or negotiate. It would at least be a cool change of pace from the regular combat rhythm.

It's slightly different than the 5e equivalent. The important part here is, there's two saves. The 1st save is for whether or not the target takes the shape of an animal. If they fail, then the 2nd save is for whether or not they maintain their mental and spell-like abilities.

And that the caster doesn't immediately know whether or not the target fails the 2nd save.

So I'm in a game where we're on this island of horrific ethereal creatures that like to assault our minds and cast insta-kill spells

We realized that, rather than try to defeat them with conventional weapons, it was much easier for the party druid to Baleful Polymorph them into little forest critters

@Nyoze the environmental threats in a modern-fantasy setting are far less favorable to the supernatural creatures, basically -- a werewolf is not going to have happy time of things if they wander onto the local airport ramp and find themselves getting sucked uncontrollably towards the engine of a 777 sitting there waiting for a gate...

Fan Michael Wolf blogs about his experience picking up Fate Accelerated again and using it to run a Fallout game. You can read a bit about how it went, and download a cool Fallout-skinned character sheet here: http://www.stargazersworld.com/2017/12/06/fate-accelerated-and-fallout/

For those who might want to write such an answer: the Australian bushlands are one of a few ecosystems around the world (from what I gather) that include totally burning down as part of an annual renewal cycle. Plants grow to a great extent, then start shedding loose dry bark, leaves, and branches; grass turns brown and keeps all its nutrients deep in the roots; Eucalyptus trees themselves are absolutely full of highly flammable oil.

The end goal of all of this is to maximize the chance that the ecosystem is maximizing its chance that the hot summer sun and dry weather conditions will start a fire that burns everything down. Then after the fire's swept through, the plants start regenerating again and the cycle begins anew.

Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with natural processes involving fire in an ecosystem and the ecological effects, the interactions between fire and the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem, and the role of fire as an ecosystem process. Many ecosystems, particularly prairie, savanna, chaparral and coniferous forests, have evolved with fire as an essential contributor to habitat vitality and renewal. Many plant species in fire-affected environments require fire to germinate, establish, or to reproduce. Wildfire suppression not only eliminates these species, but also the...

> You're fired! When someone is On fire, you can spend a Fate point to have them leave the scene in a manner of their choosing.

I didn't find anything glittery to put on for today's pikkujoulu party, so I bought a set of LED Christmas lights and will wear them under my jacket. When the time comes, I'll open my jacket and light up like a Christmas tree.

> Fire in the Disco! You can dance to set your immediate surroundings On fire. When Creating an Advantage with this ability, take +2 to your roll.

> Danger! High Voltage! Because you have superpowers to channel lightning, each scene, place a free invoke on your superpower aspect. As long as it has two or more free invokes, you can be compelled to have your powers start discharging on their own and doing bad things.

(Free invokes on a superpower aspect in this theoretical supers game would only be useable in an action actually involving your superpower.)

The Fate Core rules don't say anything specific about naming stunts, but all the example stunts in every version of Fate I've ever seen are named, and it's obvious the designers have as much fun naming them as we do.

My last couple of fate characters have been made with no more than maybe one stunt though, so I fill them out as I go. It's remarkable how few stunts I actually need to do ... anything at all that I'd want.

I made an alchemist character and we talked a lot about what kinds of stunts we might need to make it work before we got into the game -- then BESW and I decided to just go with this: "let's just say you're an alchemist, and you have an alchemy skill, which means you can do anything alchemist-y as long as you have a minute or so to draw the transmutation circles." Then there was fate points for other stuff (can't recall).

A lot of it was about how an alchemist is a polymath chemist who pushes the edge of the supernatural, so she had good logic and science skills that she could apply to things that would normally make scientists weep.

So she could do things like apply the Greek science of the humors to a situation to achieve actual results.

For example, we discovered that portals in time and space are created wherever there's a particular combination of crystalline vibrations and electromagnetic fluctuations intersecting with leylines.

So we had our psychic swordsman meditate on the ornamental crystal rocks embedded in the golf course to change their vibration frequencies, and the portal closed. The tricky part was timing it so he closed the portal immediately after the rest of the party shooed the pteronodon back to its own time.

Later on in the same campaign we explored a setting that's basically an homage to He-Man and the Masters of Umdaar... which we justified as the remnants of an ancient Atlantean outpost left to itself for thousands of years, where "magic" swords are used to interface with outpost's mechanical systems.

eg, "Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight!" is how you interface with the security surveillance systems.

Also it was all USB/Linux compatible because Trogdor's PC had spent a while lost in time and space during the previous adventure, so he spent a fate point to say that he'd done some time in Atlantis and consulted on the outpost's design.

(That way our PC who specialized in modern tech could still be useful for that adventure.)

One of the big showdown moments was a fight between the tech-specialist PC and a technomage ghost, for control of the outpost's AI.

@kviiri I've got an idea for a PC that I've never had a chance to play: she's an astronomer who's convinced she's discovered how the alignment of planets and stars relates to dark matter so that seemingly impossible micro-events can be predicted and taken advantage of.

So she studies the stars and planets and manipulates local situations so that the dark matter effects make Weird Things happen according to her desires.

But of course in reality she's just channeling Cthulhuian powers and unwittingly becoming a priestess of Beings From Beyond Time And Space.

She had no idea that she was a warlock, instead believing her powers came from her understanding and manipulation of practical astrology. The quirk where she occasionally says "fish" instead of whatever she means to say? What are you talking about? She's perfectly fish.

My favorite warlock concept is a somewhat gimmicky person who believes they (and everyone else) are just characters in a tabletop role-playing game and that they receive their powers from the player and their GM, who act as their joint patrons.

Hmm, note to self: run a horror game where a villain uses vile magic to teleport to our world. Describe their approach to the game room. Have some accomplice knock on the door right when I describe them arriving.

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@GreySage I don't really understand why these badges exist. Under what circumstances would you accept an answer and not upvote it? Is there a different culture around upvoting on other stacks that makes these relevant?

...wtf Unsung Hero has been awarded 17k+ times on SO. Do people there not believe in upvoting?

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Hello, I have a question. - If a creature (a fext for example) is weak against a weapon from unusual materials (glass in my example). How can I explain this weakness? Where do these weaknesses come from? (how are they created in folklore?)

(Well, the original goal was to use an archon, but the PCs flubbed that mission and the sorcerer was the next best target. So they spent the whole campaign grooming him for compatibility, and the final confrontation was to kill him in a way that got the soul into the sword.)

(Unfortunately they didn't count on the sword immediately dominating the warlock who wanted to wield it, and forcing the warlock to attack the rest of the party while calling fireballs down on himself.)

> THE BOWLER'S BALL (hardware) Function: Magical bowling ball Flaw: Haunted by a recalcitrant ghost Effect: You must use Rapport instead of Athletics to bowl with this ball, but you may also use it to attack with Rapport as if using Combat. Any successful roll you make to use this ball gains 2 shifts of effectiveness.

Not unless the whole campaign is designed around the conceit, like the time I ran a "misfits and dysfunctionals" campaign.

(It featured the dwarven bard with negative charisma and his intelligent bagpipes, the wizard who wanted to be an archer so badly he developed a mental block and could only cast spells by imbuing them into arrows, the raised-by-wolves ranger who only knew a number of words in Common equal to his Intelligence score...)

- Some intelligent items can speak out loud, which would let you use verbal components. - Not all spells require verbal *or* somatic components, much less both. Focus your spells known on those. - Spell-like and supernatural abilities, even those which mimic spells, do not require somatic, verbal, or material components.

Or there could always be a quest that allows you to do new stuff (or should i say staff ;) ) Did you figure out what will be you primary motivation as a staff? Magic items only have a few motivations/purposes they follow.